Theoretical Background and Hypothesis 1 Psychological Capital and Job Engagement

385 2007.Similar to the role of positivity in the workplace, the importance of engaged employees has long been recognized and assumed to have an impact on performance. According to Kahn 1990, employee engagement entails “the simultaneous employment and expression of a person’s preferred self in task behaviors that promote connections to work and others, personal presence physical, cognitive, and emotional, and active full role performance”. Schaufeli, Bakker, and Salanova 2006 state that employee engagement consists of three interrelated dimensions: vigor, dedication, and absorption. Similar to PsyCap, engagement is theorized to be a higher-order core factor comprising three interrelated construct Schaufeli et al., 2006. According to Fredickson’s 2001 broaden-and-build theory, positive emotion has a positive effect on individual behavior, whereby heshe believed that positive emotion can be broadened in order to build on the four PsyCap resources. The synergistic potential of efficacy, hope, optimism, and resiliency make up PsyCap, leading to greater energy and engagement. We propose the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 1. Subordinates’ psychological capital will be positively associated with subordinates’ job engagement 2.2 Supervisors’ Psychological Capital, Subordinates’ Psychological Capital, and Subordinates’ Job Engagement Applying the conservation of resources COR theory Hobfoll, 1988, 1989, 1998 to psychological capital, we argue that supervisors’ positive psychology is likely to play an important role in this social information signal exerting considerable influence on employees’ perception of available psychological resources Kramer, 1995; Lam, Huang, Janssen, 2010. Therefore, leaders have a great impact on organizations and their members Yukl, 2005. Hence, the leader provides an ideal reference for followers’ emulation and vicarious learning. For example, Brief and Weiss 2002 found leaders who have high energy are more likely to energize their subordinates. Specifically, leaders who report having higher levels of efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience would be expected to transfer those levels to followers by serving as exemplary guides to their followers’ behavior. We therefore propose the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 2. Supervisors’ psychological capital will be positively associated with subordinates’ psychological capital. Extending previous research on psychological capital and following Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2, we argue that supervisors’ psychological capital may influence individual job engagement by directly influencing the subordinate’s psychological capital. Thus, supervisors’ psychological capital, which may be thought of as a key team-level capacity for positivity, acts as an important mechanism through which psychological resource supports are able to enhance individual psychological capital and subsequently enable individuals to engage at work. Supporting this argument, Gooty, Gavin, Johnson, Frazier, and Snow 2009 reported that positive psychological capital mediated the link between transformational leadership and employees’ job performance in-role performance and organizational citizenship behavior. Based on these findings, we therefore propose the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 3. Supervisors’ psychological capital positively affects subordinates’ job engagement 386 at work through the mediating mechanism of subordinates’ psychological capital. 3. Method 3.1 Participants and Procedures The proposed theoretical framework was tested using data collected from a telecom company in Taiwan. These participants were members of intact work groups and performed relatively similar types of service or subordinate-related functions. In addition, to avoid common method variance problems, information was collected from multiple sources and a cross lag time design was used Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Lee, Podsakoff, 2003. Specifically, at time 1 T1, supervisors filled out a survey that included a self-assessment of their individual psychological capital supervisor PC T1. At time 2 T2, we asked each subordinate to complete a self-assessment of their psychological capital subordinate PC T2. At time 3, employees started job engagement. In addition, at time 3, employee supervisors provided evaluations of each employee’s task performance and contextual performance. The time interval between two adjacent phases ranged from 12 to 15 weeks. We had a final usable sample with complete matched supervisor-subordinates information for 319 employees and 60 supervisors. The average number of team members was 5.32 3-5 subordinates per supervisor.

3.2 Measures

Because the original scale was in English, all survey measures employed the back translation procedure recommended by Brislin 1980. Supervisor T1 and Subordinates’ Psychological Capital T2 Psychological capital was measured in the psychological capital questionnaire PCQ; Luthans et al., 2007. The Cronbach’s α for supervisors’ psychological capital was .87, while it was.88 for subordinates’ psychological capital. Job Engagement T2 Job engagement is a scale that assesses the level of employee engagement Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma, Bakker, 2002. It was measured by Schaufeli et al. 2006 and consists of 17 items and three subscales such as engagement vigor, dedication, and absorption. All items were rated on a seven-point frequency rating scale ranging from 1 “Never” to 7 “Always.” The Cronbach’s  was .81. Control Variables Given that we obtained responses from multiple teams, the following team variables were also controlled for team supervisors’ tenure in years and supervisors’ educational level 0 = high school and below; 1 = college and above. Furthermore, at the individual level, we controlled for factors including individual team members’ seniority in years and educational level 0 = high school and below; 1 = college and above because these variables were found to be related to job attitudes and job performance. 4. Results 4.1 HLM Results Table 1 presents the HLM results. As shown in Table 1, HLM results revealed that subordinates’ 387 psychological capital significantly predicted their job engagement  ˆ = .92, p .001; Model 3. Similarly, HLM results revealed that supervisors’ psychological capital significantly predicts subordinates’ psychological capital  ˆ = .15, p .05; Model 1. These results provide support for Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2, respectively. Table 1 presents the HLM results. In the first step, supervisors’ psychological capital needs to be related to job engagement. In support of this condition, HLM results revealed that supervisors’ psychological capital was significantly related to job engagement（  ˆ = .17, p .05; Model 2. In the second step, supervisors’ psychological capital needs to be related to subordinates’ psychological capital, which was supported in our testing of Hypothesis 2 above. Step 3 requires that individuals’ psychological capital be related to job engagement. This requirement was supported by the results of Hypothesis 1 see Model 3. Finally, in the fourth step, we included both individuals’ psychological capital and the mediators in the regression. As reported in Model 4 in Table 1, the effect of supervisors’ psychological capital was not significant（  ˆ = .06, ns, Model 4, but it was reduced in magnitude compared with the effect in step 1. Therefore, subordinates’ psychological capital mediated supervisors’ psychological capital on job engagement, providing support for Hypothesis 3. A Sobel 1982 test also confirmed that the indirect effect was significant t = 5.59, p .001.

5. Discussion

One of the critiques of positive organizational behavior raises concern about the utility of PsyCap with respect to job outcomes Avey, Luthans, Youssef, 2010; Luthans, et al., 2007; Walumbwa et al., 2010. However, at this stage in the development of positive organizational behavior , empirical analysis is need to assess whether PsyCap adds value to job engagement, which, to date, remains untested. This is the first study to examine the relationship between PsyCap and job engagement. This study supports that job engagement as a potential valuable positive psychological resource may lead to increased employee engagement. The findings thus provide empirical support for Sweetman and Luthans’ 2010 argument that a key component in developing job engagement can be found in developing PsyCap.